A Cup of Cold Water

 

I got to spend my first week in Africa with my Mom!

The week was a whirlwind of buses, flights, emotions, worship, ministry and great memories. We flew out of Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Tuesday, April 28, and landed in Johannesburg, South Africa and took a bus to Manzini, Swaziland on Wednesday. Once we arrived in Manzini, my eleven squad mates whose parents were participating in the Parent Vision Trip (PVT) and I went to our hostel and set up our tents in the back yard. The next day our parents arrived.

While we were sitting around waiting for our parents to arrive, a few pranksters on our squad had the thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we weren’t here when our parents showed up?” Thinking about how excited our parents were to see us after these eight months, and how they flew all the way to Africa to see us, we all had a good laugh at the thought of us not being there to welcome them when they arrived. Then we devised a plan to play a little trick on them. When the parents arrived, we hid under the back porch while the hostel owner told them we were tired from traveling and we were all taking naps in our tents. So the parents rushed down the stairs toward our tents and we all jumped out from under the porch and surprised them. There were lots of smiles, laughs and long embraces. One of my squad mates got the whole reunion on video.

 

 

 

 

 

We spent the rest of that day catching up with our parents, getting to know the other parents, worshiping together, and preparing for ministry. Adventures in Missions (AIM) is the overarching organization that the World Race is a part of, and they do extensive work in Swaziland. So the whole month we are partnering with the AIM base in Manzini. They have thirty four Care Points, where the children of Manzini go for after-school care, discipleship, and their only meal of the day. AIM partners with Children’s Hope Chest, an organization that provides the food they in the Care Points serve each day. All the food is packaged by volunteers in the U.S., so it’s really cool to see the receiving end of the partnership, where the children are being fed. AIM’s goal is to help the Swazi people become self-sufficient by planting gardens and generating income, and they are taking steps to work toward that goal. Swaziland is one of the countries with the highest population of AIDS victims, and as a result one of the highest orphan populations. Most of the children live with older siblings, grandparents, or other relatives. A shepherd of one of the Care Points we visited told us that over 75% of the children have lost either one or both of their parents. The Care Points are our main ministry for the month.

 

The next day (Friday) was our first day of ministry with our parents. The group split in two and half went to one Care Point and half went to another. When we arrived at the Timbultini Two Care Point and stepped out of the van, we were immediately swarmed with beautiful, smiling African children. They fought their way to the front of the crowd to try to get the chance to latch on to one of our hands, and those who succeeded usually didn’t leave our side until the end of the day. Most of the time we had two or three children holding each of our hands. I had to pry my fingers out of their grip if I needed to use my hands to do anything. These are the most affectionate children I have ever seen in my life. Every single one of them is dying to hold a hand, sit on a lap, or be carried by an adult. I can’t help but think it’s because they’re starved for this affection because there are so many orphans and so few parents in this country. We spent the day just playing with the children and loving on them. We read them books, sang songs and played games. We also helped serve their lunch. Part of the group went to do a home visit, where they brought large bags of corn meal, rice, and beans to a family and talked and prayed with them. My mom and I got to do our home visit on Monday, so we just played with the kids the entire day on Friday. When we had played every game and sang every song we could think of, we got some of the older Swazi girls to teach us some of their games. That’s when the real fun started. They knew so many games that involved forming a circle, then clapping, singing and taking turns dancing. When it was time for us to go home, the children didn’t want to let us leave, but we got to tell them that we’d be back on Monday.

 

 

 

 

 

The Care Points are usually closed on Saturdays, but since we were there, we put on a fun day for the children at the Tulwane Care Point. We brought balls, jump ropes, and a blow-up bounce house, and we spent the day playing with the children. My mom and I spent most of the day playing jump rope with the teen girls, tug-of-war with some of the boys, and tossing a ball with three preschoolers. We all had luch together, which was none other than the famous Swazi chicken dust. It’s the most popular meal in Swaziland, and it’s comprised of a chicken breast and leg, seasoned with the seasoning they call dust, pap, which is boiled corn meal, and a side of lettuce and tomato. Delicious. At the end of the day, the shepherd gathered all the children and they sang some songs for us. It was beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

When we got back to our hostel, the rest of our squad (all my squad mates whose parents didn’t come) were there. They wanted to meet our parents, so they took buses across town to get to our hostel. They stayed for dinner and worship, and then the parents pulled money together to pay for them to spend the night at the hostel with us. It was like my two families colliding, because my squad has been my family for the year, and they’ve heard countless stories about how much I’m like my mom, and they finally got to see it for themselves. Side note: some of my squad mates voted and decided that I was the most like my parent in personality. (Courtney and her mom won the look-alike vote.)

 

Sunday we had a day off to enjoy Swaziland with our parents. The whole group did a mini safari together. I call it a mini safari because it was only a couple hours long and this place didn’t have any of “the big five” animals. But it was so much fun. We rode around in the big open-topped safari vehicle and we saw impala, buffalo, warthogs, zebras, hippos, and crocodiles. Afterward we went out for lunch and then had the rest of the evening to spend one-on-one with our parents. My mom and I ate chocolate and tried to figure out how to fit all the souvenirs I bought in Asia in her bag for her to take home for me. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Monday we went back to the Timbultini Two Care Point and played with our children again. They remembered all our names and the ones who had clung to us on Friday were back to make their claim on us again. In the afternoon my mom and I got to do our home visit. We carried rice and beans up the mountainous dirt road up to the house we were assigned to visit. Sudumo the shepherd came with us to translate. At the house lived a great-grandma, a grandma, and two children, probably ages eight and twelve. I don’t know where the mother was. One of the first things the great-grandmother said was that she was in severe back pain and couldn’t sleep at night because of it. So we gathered around and prayed for healing in her back. She was so appreciative, and as soon as we finished, she asked us to pray over her daughter, the grandmother, for healing of a heart issue. She had been to the “magic doctor” for treatment, but it had been ineffective. She had terrible looking scars on her upper chest and neck from the treatment. She told us that she’s tried everything else, so she had no other hope but to look to the Lord for healing. It reminded me of the woman in the Bible who had the blood issue who had spent all her money on doctors, but was healed when she reached out and touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. So we prayed over her too. Then they asked us to pray over the twelve year old girl, who also had the heart condition. That’s when I noticed that the great-grandmother also had the same scars on her chest that the grandmother had. So we concluded that the heart condition was a generational ailment, so we prayed that the curse would be broken off the family forever in Jesus’ name. After praying my mom suggested we sing a song, so we sang How Great Is Our God. Then we took a group picture, said our goodbyes and left. When we got back to the Care Point it was time for us to head back for dinner. This goodbye was more difficult because when the kids asked us when we’d be coming back, we had to tell them we weren’t. That’s the hard thing about loving others; it hurts to say goodbye.

 

 

The next morning we said goodbye to our parents as they loaded up their bus to take them back to the airport. We thought we were getting on our bus immediately after the parents’ bus took off, but our driver wasn’t around. So we had a few hours to relax and recover from the busy week while we waited for our driver to show up.

I can’t even describe how much I loved doing ministry with my mom. I can see so much of myself in her, and it makes me understand a lot of why I am the way I am. She is incredibly good with kids. Some of my squad mates and their parents even commented on how great she was with them. Initially I explained that it was because she used to be a preschool teacher. But now that I think about it more, it’s just who she is. It’s so natural for her to love God’s children because God’s love spills out of her. She’s just silly and goofy with them and they absolutely love it. They gravitate toward her because they know she loves them, and she loves them because God’s love is inside of her. 

 

 

Each night at worship Joe, the AIM employee who lead PVT, opened the floor for the Racers and parents to debrief the day or share a story. The second night my mom stood up and shared some things on her heart. Before the trip she was being attacked with some fears, doubts and feelings that she’s not good enough or that she can’t do anything to make a difference. Then the week before she left her pastor shared a sermon about offering a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name. It comes from Matthew 10:42 where Jesus says,

Jesus doesn’t always ask us to do crazy, humongous things for him. We don’t need to feel the pressure to go and change Swaziland in a week. All He asks is that we do small acts of love for the people that He loves. That was exactly what my mom needed to hear. She thought to herself, “Well, I can do that” and hopped on a plane to Swaziland to offer a cup of cold water.